Powder Ridge Rock Festival: Most Famous Concert That Never Happened?

The Powder Ridge Rock Festival was scheduled for July 31 through August 2, 1970 but it was cancelled shortly after a legal injunction. That didn't stop 30,000 concertgoers from showing up anyway.

JOHN ADAMIAN, jadamian@ctnow.comCTNOW

Pop quiz: What's the most famous concert that ever happened? Most people would probably say Woodstock, the blow-out 1969 festival that symbolised and crystalised the hippie dream and the counterculture of the era. Ok — this next question's a little more difficult: What's the most famous concert that never happened? A good candidate would probably be the Powder Ridge Rock Festival Festival, which lured thousands of music fans to Middlefield in late July of 1970.

The festival was probably doomed from the beginning, with objections from town officials in Middlefield as well as court rulings blocking the event as the date approached. In June of 1970 the Courant reported that 25 musical acts and 50,000 fans were expected to attend the three-day festival. "It's going to happen much easier than Woodstock," one of the promoters told the paper. Advance precautions were to be taken to avoid some of the problems associated with traffic, public health and drug abuse. It was supposed to be a rocking affair, with the lineup planned to include Eric Burdon & War, Sly and the Family Stone, Fleetwood Mac, Melanie, Mountain, James Taylor, Joe Cocker, the Allman Brothers, Little Richard, Van Morrison, Jethro Tull, Janis Joplin, Chuck Berry, Grand Funk Railroad, Richie Havens and Ten Years After.

But it wasn't to be — with the exception of the folk singer Melanie, who, defying a court-ordered injunction against performers, famously entertained the crowd with the help of an ice cream truck. "I just took a chance and I went," remembered Melanie, when interviewed by the Hartford Advocate in 2006. "They hooked me up to a generator off a Mr. Softee truck. And I sang. I got to sing. I felt like I was Santa Claus. I didn't get arrested but it was a close call."

Despite having sold tickets for $20, performers were prevented from playing due to an order requiring the promoters and the owners of the ski resort to shut down all utilities and close all facilities before the scheduled start of the festival.

"There will be no festival. I can assure you of that," State Sen. John Pickett of Middletown said at the time. "But there could be danger. I appeal and implore young people to stay away."

Passes were issued to area residents to allow them to use the town roads, which would be policed and blocked to any festival goers. But that didn't prevent eager crowds from gathering. And an estimated 30,000 people were camped on the site before word of the event's cancellation was announced.

Lawlessness and confusion were rampant. "For better or worse, the ill-fated Powder Ridge Rock Festival became a 'people's festival' about 12:15 a.m. Thursday," Steve Starger reported in the July 31 edition of the Courant. An announcement from the huge stage for the planned-for weekend festival said "Power to the people. The pigs have run away in their Cadillacs. This is a people's festival now." A dispatch from the day before chronicled LSD and marijuana being sold in the open air, with naked swimming (in a pond that was later declared a polluted area by officials and made off limits), and Hare Krishna chants by robed devotees. Crowd members seemed to take security into their own hands. Other accounts in other venues told of anonymous sex in the broad daylight.

Despite the relative absence of national performers, a few Connecticut bands entertained the crowd, with Goodhill, an eight-piece band from Fairfield, and Swan, from New Haven, playing using that Mister Softee generator to power the sound system.

For an event that wasn't happening, there sure was a lot to talk about it. Famous "festival doctor" Dr. William Abruzzi, age 44 at the time, who had treated festival goers at Woodstock and elsewhere, was on hand to tend to the crowd at Powder Ridge. An Aug. 3, 1970 a report by the Courant said that Abruzzi "treated more than 1,000 bad trips" at Powder Ridge. (That would be one in every 30 festival goers, if correct.) Others had to be sent to the emergency rooms, including a 19-year-old woman from New Jersey who was run over by a car near the festival site.

In the end, nothing happened, or maybe a lot happened, depending on your perspective. Volunteers tried to feed festival goers with smuggled-in food, people worked to clean up the trashed festival site, various political causes were espoused from the stage. It was no Woodstock, but it was still memorable to many of the attendees. A group of filmmakers in California have been trying to make a documentary film about the festival, but — like the ill-starred event itself —- they haven't been able to make it happen, so far at least.